Corporate Thank-you Notes

A gracious note of thanks can distinguish you from your competition. But how many ways can you say “thanks” before the clichés pall? Here are four ideas for corporate thank-you notes.

1. If you don't have any firsthand knowledge about the individual you are thanking, you can

* Discover something about them or their work OR
* Thank them by describing in some detail
- the gift or what they did for you AND/OR
- the impact it had on you and your work group

The secret to describing in detail is using vivid verbs. Describe the gift or favor, and/or how it helped you, as vividly as you can. For example, instead of writing, "Thank you for filling our order promptly," you might write:

“We received our order only 48 hours after we e-mailed it to you. Even more importantly, because we had the display components, we could assemble the project on time and present it to our clients at their annual convention. We impressed them; and you have impressed us. Thank you.”

Notice those verbs: assemble, present, impress.

2. If you are a salesperson who must thank a potential client after every sales call, you need not resort to remarks about the weather or generic compliments. Enliven the note by alluding to something that happened while you met with this person.

Dear Lee:

It was a pleasure to meet you Wednesday. I’m still marveling at how you conversed so easily in Spanish with the waiter at Lucy’s El Adobe.

Thank you for giving me the chance to show you our line of parts for the RX-2. I appreciate your needs for continuity and I’m looking forward to demonstrating that we at Acme can....

3. A handwritten thank-you note is a mark of personal favor.
Always use the finest paper. (You can order note cards embossed with your name or initials at a department store or stationery store.) Write with a good pen, either a fountain pen or one of the better roller-balls, and use blue ink to distinguish your writing from printed copy. Put a heavily lined grid under the stationery to keep your lines straight. And write legibly.

4. If you are an executive, or you write for an executive, you may wish to use executive stationery for business thank-you letters. U.S. executive stationery is 7.5” x 10” (19 cm x 25.4 cm); the inside address appears at the end of the letter; and it is well-suited to thanking business associates for personal or social favors.

Examples of thank-you notes can be found on websites and in books:

Letitia Baldrige's Complete Guide to Executive Manners (1985) NY: Rawson Associates, pp. 120-127

Webster’s Guide to Business Correspondence 2nd ed. (1996) Springfield, MA: Merriam Webster. pp. 300-305.

Online classes in writing

In early 2009, I begin offering my first all-online writing classes at a new site, http://www.camsems.com.

WriteWell-1 is an introduction to academic writing for graduate and advanced undergrad students, especially in the helping professions.

Its sequel is WriteWell-2: Coherence and Persuasion (C&P). C&P is also a standalone class for any writer who wants to construct paragraphs that are lean, precise, and persuasive. The third class will be WriteWell-3: The Clear Sentence. More classes will follow.

I never realized how an online class could enrich learning. Students will be interacting most of the time, they receive my immediate feedback, and they can query me privately any time. Best of all, they can learn at their own pace, whenever their schedule permits.

For about $150, students will have access to a class for 60 days. Query privileges extend, as my students know, for life.